You Might Also Like: Earsay: The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club

**Kal Penn** (0:02)
Welcome to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. I'm your host Kal Penn. So each episode, I get into a different audiobook with a special guest. And for today's episode, we recorded in front of a live audience at Audible Story House in New York. It was the first live Earsay event. I hope it's not the last, that it was awesome to see some of you out there in the real world. So thanks to everyone who came.
If you could not be there, well today's the next best thing. We talked about the incredibly fun Dungeon Crawler Carl with the author Matt Dinniman and the audiobooks narrator Jeff Hays.
How's everybody doing? Welcome to a very special live episode of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. I'm Kal Penn. So we are at the Audible Story House in New York City. Thank you for being here.
You're not here to see me, though. I'm aware of this. I'll get into who we're here to see. Today, we're gonna have fun. We're gonna talk about The End of the World, a life-or-death game show, and a little cat, you can say it with me, named Donut. Perfect. Today, we're talking about the hugely popular global phenomenon, Dungeon Crawler Carl, and the story begins like this.
27-year-old Carl has just been dumped. His girlfriend's off in the Bahamas. He's stuck watching her cat, Donut. Of course, Donut escapes out the window in the middle of the night in the freezing cold. Carl runs after her in his boxers, grabs a leather jacket and the only shoes nearby, his ex's pink Crocs. Way too small. So he takes off after the cat. Unfortunately, that's the exact moment an alien corporation turns Earth into a massive, terraformed dungeon. Everyone indoors is killed instantly. Buildings are converted into the dungeon. Carl survives because he's outside, chasing a cat. Now, like the other survivors, he's forced into a deadly, televised game with RPG mechanics, stats, enemies, loot boxes. Carl's life becomes a dungeon crawl. And that story, originally a serialized novel on Royal Road, has exploded into a full franchise. Graphic novel, toys, a TV adaptation in the works, which just for the record, I am available to star in. And now, an eighth book. So, here with me today to talk about Dungeon Crawler Carl, author Matt Dinniman.
And founder and CEO of Soundbooth Theatre, the man who brings the stories to life so vividly in the audiobook format, Jeff Hays.

**Matt Dinniman** (3:18)
How's it going, everybody?

**Kal Penn** (3:20)
Welcome, guys.

**Matt Dinniman** (3:21)
That intro was really good. Jeff, you're fired.

**Kal Penn** (3:27)
Like I said, I am available. It's not a competition. I could never compete with Jeff, as you know. Uh-oh.
Matt, the Dungeon Crawlers are unwilling contestants broadcast to an alien audience. Some crawlers have patrons, they're live viewer counts. This feels like a perverse amplification of social media, Survivor and Squid Game. What's the origin story of this? Where did that come from?

**Matt Dinniman** (3:52)
Yeah. So I've been writing my whole life and I have...
If you're listening, Jeff is doing shenanigans. But I'm not on purpose. I have been writing my whole life and I have a list of story ideas that I started when I was literally in middle school. I typed it out when I was in high school on a word processor. And I saved that file. I still have that file to this day. And one of my story ideas was Alien Game Show. That's the only thing. That was the line that I had on there. And over the years, I started and stopped this particular storyline. And I never really committed to it. And then I had finished writing a book called Kaiju Battlefield Surgeon, which was a pretty heavy book. And if you've read it, you're sick.

**Jeff Hays** (4:46)
Such a sick f**k.

**Matt Dinniman** (4:47)
We got one here.

**Jeff Hays** (4:48)
We got a Kaiju reader right here.

**Matt Dinniman** (4:50)
Someone in the audience is wearing a shirt about having a penis eaten off by a frog. But anyway...

**Kal Penn** (4:57)
I'm glad you paused just for the listeners to digest that for a second.

**Matt Dinniman** (5:01)
Well, anyway, I started writing it. I know the date. It was December 26, 2019 And it was the day after my birthday. And I always try to start new projects that day. For some reason, it's become like a thing. And I just thought I was going to write a very simple story about a man and his ex-girlfriend's cat. But my big influences were the Schwarzenegger Running Man, and the original book too, which recently was made into a movie, which was a very different story. And stuff like that. Hunger Games is an influence, but a lot of Battle Royale, stuff like that has been a big influence on me my whole life.